This would appear to be the MSM's perfect storm -- a white-woman-in-distress story, and she's a journalist! The Judy-in-the-slammer-watch starts NOW, and the countdown clock on the number of minutes Judith Miller has spent in confinement will be in the lower right-hand corner of everyone's eyes momentarily.
Me, I'm torn (don't worry, I'm having it sewn up tomorrow). On the one hand, I've been in Judy's shoes, although with substantially lower heels. While I was editing the editorial page of my college newspaper, I ran a satirical piece on fraternity life by a former editor of the paper, who asked that it be published anonymously. A few months later, I was a candidate for editor-in-chief, and the totally-Greek student council demanded to know the name of the piece's author, preparing to assume that if I didn't come up with a name the author was me, proving my anti-Greek proclivities and therefore making me unfit to edit. Silly little kid that I was, I protected my author's anonymity, and migrated to the humor magazine for my senior year.
On the other hand, this is Judith Miller, who spent many New York Times front pages peddling the administration's WMD story about Saddam Hussein. Her paper apologized for its pre-war coverage, but demurely desisted from mentioning her copious contributions to it. Is there such a thing as karma? If so, Judith Miller is in the pokey as punishment for helping to get over 1700 Americans and thousands of Iraqis killed for a reason yet to be determined.
Matt Cooper talks and walks. Judith Miller rests near Moussaoui.
Rough justice, anyone?
UPDATE (10:13 PM PST, 7/7):
Wow. The ad hominems are flowing thick and fast in response to this post. Almost as if this is Blogworld.
So, in response, "reduced tolerance of bullshit" is a funnier reason for invading a sovereign country that anything I could come up with. Hell, I run out of patience with bullshit every day, I'm in fucking show business.
How history will regard the Iraq invasion is a very interesting bet: is the author really so sure that, 20 years on, the Middle East will be safer, more democratic, more stable, less of a source of violence, than before Saddam's statue fell? Re: the "great beast" being in chains, I didn't think the King Kong remake had been released yet.
As to the comments with a shred of substance to them, a lot of you folks need to read up on the subject of judy Miller's alleged principle. A good place to start might be Mickey Kaus, who, at "Nice Try", attempts to craft a definition of a person who can claim the privilege that is neither absurdly broad nor uselessly narrow. It's not as easy as a lot of you apparently think.